How exactly was "Life better in the past"?

[Origanalist]

what does it mean entitled to life if not entitled to be fed? feed yourself, if you can't it's not a right?

I guess it's too bad you weren't around to troll the authors of that document with that question. The mirth you would have created.....

 

[PRB]

I guess it's too bad you weren't around to troll the authors of that document with that question. The mirth you would have created.....

still doesn't answer the question : list all the rights God gave us.

 

[Origanalist]

still doesn't answer the question : list all the rights God gave us.

No. And my comment had nothing to do with what you demand.

 

[PRB]

No. And my comment had nothing to do with what you demand.

the question remains unanswered whether you intended to answer it or not. Just putting it out there.

 

[Origanalist]

the question remains unanswered whether you intended to answer it or not. Just putting it out there.

Sounds like a personnel problem.

 

[KingNothing]

Comparing the world in which you exist to a previous time has significant limitations, namely that you did not live in the past.

Viewing life as better today has the same flaws as nostalgiaism. We are no smarter than past generations, but we'd like to think we are progressively evolving. Technology is also just an adaptive tool. Semiconductor electronics is great, but it is, arguably, not better than the printing press. Sex still works the same way; you don't need to buy somebody's how-to manual.

There are very measurable things that show life is better today than it was in the past: crime rates, life-spans, mortality rates, free-time, etc. There are plenty of things that show life is far better now than in the past.

 

[tod evans]

There are very measurable things that show life is better today than it was in the past: crime rates,

Better eh?

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/atlas/proliferation1900-2000.html

 

[KingNothing]

Ok, so in the "worse now" column we have "the war on drugs and prison," in the "better now" column we have: life-span, vaccinations, creature comforts, civil rights, women's rights, no lynchings, no World Wars for 60 years, proliferation of knowledge and communication via the internet, access to education, access to health care, ability to travel.

As bad as the war on drugs is -and it is HORRIFIC- it pails in comparison the positives we are able to enjoy today.

 

[tod evans]

Ok, so in the "worse now" column we have "the war on drugs and prison," in the "better now" column we have: life-span, vaccinations, creature comforts, civil rights, women's rights, no lynchings, no World Wars for 60 years, proliferation of knowledge and communication via the internet, access to education, access to health care, ability to travel.

As bad as the war on drugs is -and it is HORRIFIC- it pails in comparison the positives we are able to enjoy today.

Maybe to you.....

To me most of what you list as a net positive points to increased governmental oversight and intervention.

That to me is not "better" in any sense of the word.

Damn near any societal net positive that can be named has at its roots big government.....If reality is to prove these instances as truly net positives government must be removed from the equation.

The prison map is more contingent on big government than the war on drugs, there would be a war on something else if drugs disappeared tomorrow because government is so big now it's beneficiaries can vote to continually expand it.

Back in the 60's and 70's when many of us started fighting the drug laws the fight made sense, now government has grown to the point there's no way it'd shrink if all drugs were made legal tomorrow, point being; Don't focus on the drug laws, they're only a symptom of too big a government.

 

[Origanalist]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to tod evans again.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Ok, so in the "worse now" column we have "the war on drugs and prison," in the "better now" column we have: life-span, vaccinations, creature comforts, civil rights, women's rights, no lynchings, no World Wars for 60 years, proliferation of knowledge and communication via the internet, access to education, access to health care, ability to travel.

In the worse in the past column we have shorter mortality and less crime. In the better in the past column we have more freedom, cleaner air and water, more intact families, more simple living, no unending war on terrorism, no drug war, fewer government privilege contracts, more durable consumer products, higher quality food, smarter students, fewer degenerative diseases, fewer prisons, Indians on their own land and not in reservations, people who knew the difference between rights and privileges, etc.

There are very measurable things that show life is better today than it was in the past: crime rates, life-spans, mortality rates, free-time, etc. There are plenty of things that show life is far better now than in the past.

There are very measurable things that show life was better in the past than today: more freedom, more intact families, cleaner air and water, less terrorism, etc. There are plenty of things that show life is far better in the past than today.

 

[acptulsa]

The mere fact that this is post number 252 speaks volumes. The question should provoke unanimous laughter. It always has before. Even the most nostalgic person thirty years ago would joke about it.

Given the pace of technology over the last three decades, when the question has to be weighed in a serious manner, it means we have been doing some things seriously wrong. In some ways we're coming along just fine; in others we're marching right down the garden path. And in a republic, who the hell is going to do something about it if we don't?

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Do I need to live it to know I don't want slavery, polio, and war?

Slavery and war still exist. Some aspects today are, arguably, more prevalent and more devastating than in the past.
Today's degenerative diseases can be every bit as painful--if not more painful--than yesteryear's viral diseases.

Technology sure as hell beats not having it.

There was never a time in man's existence that he did not have technology.

Since the invention of condoms and birth control pills, sex comes with much less consequences than before.

Birth control, including condoms, is hardly a recent phenomenon.

The tradeoffs of some birth control are also not insignificant. Condoms provide nowhere near the physiological satisfaction as natural contact. Birth control pills have significant side effects. Consequences can also be the result of less respect, more carelessness, more enabling, more secularism. etc.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Your "right" to the $100 can be taken away from you. Perhaps voluntarily, perhaps by force.

Somebody can take the $100, but not the right to the $100. Two very different things.

 

[PRB]

There was never a time in man's existence that he did not have technology.

But there was a time there wasn't iPads and smartphones. Not all technology are equal.

 

[oyarde]

Greatest one star thread of all time .It should have a negative star.

 

[acptulsa]

But there was a time there wasn't iPads and smartphones. Not all technology are equal.

That's true. The steam engine freed us from mule power, sail power, and slave power for everything from sawing logs to circumnavigating the globe. Apple just allows us to post lolcats while looking like a zombie walking down the street and bumping our heads on light poles.

Definitely not equal.

 

[Czolgosz]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to tod evans again.

Gotcha covered.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

But there was a time there wasn't iPads and smartphones. Not all technology are equal.

Calling a smart phone better than the fundamental technology on which is based doesn't really make sense. There are seminal technologies and then there are products.

A smart phone is not fundamental at all. I would sustain much longer on this earth with my ability to hammer and no phone, than your use of smart phone and no ability to hammer.

 

[osan]

Ok, so in the "worse now" column we have "the war on drugs and prison," in the "better now" column we have: life-span, vaccinations, creature comforts, civil rights, women's rights, no lynchings, no World Wars for 60 years, proliferation of knowledge and communication via the internet, access to education, access to health care, ability to travel.

As bad as the war on drugs is -and it is HORRIFIC- it pails in comparison the positives we are able to enjoy today.

Your eyesight is in severe need of medical attention... that, or you are cherry-picking in a most brazenly unskillful manner, the real problem there being the likelihood that you are attempting to sell something nobody with the sense of a severely retarded carrot would want to buy.

The "worse" column could be populated to vastly outstrip the size and character of your "better" column".

No world wars for 60 years? WTF? Is that supposed to be taken seriously, or am I simply missing your sense of humor? Firstly, we have had no world wars to date, save the globalist war on human rights, which is raging in widely out of control fashion and standing only to get hotter by the day for the foreseeable future. But if you insist on referring to the "Great War" and so-called "WW II" as "world wars", let us note how those lasted a comparatively mere 4 and 5 years, respectively. While the death tolls were truly impressive, how do you seemingly ignore the fact that we have been at it in Eye-Rack minimally for 12 years, but more like 23? How about Afghanistan? How about the increasing size of the envelope of US entanglements resulting in an American ambassador being butt-fucked to death on Libyan streets and those ridiculously unsound minds occupying the ISIS skulls who are merrily decapitating thousands upon thousands of presumably innocent civilians including young children?

Warring aside, how about a planet so profoundly polluted by the refuse of the great "industrial revolution" that huge swaths of humanity are now faced with the choice of drinking bottled water or poisoning themselves? Fluorides pose yet another threat to the vigor of humans, and those are willfully introduced into the food chain.

How about failed uranium reactors? Weapons of mass destruction? Do you REALLY believe the world is better off with nuclear weapons, particularly when one considers that men the likes of Obama and Putin have their fingers on the buttons? Do you feel safer knowing the screws-loose Pakistanis have several serviceable weapons in their clutches? Does 200 years of lead-based paints make you think life is better? The list is SO long, these items of eminently questionable effect upon the quality of life that we could literally devote thousands of pages to their listing and abstracted descriptions.

You will forgive me if I tell you that your view of these things is hair raisingly myopic and, to be very blunt, so apparently self-serving. I would also add that it seems apparent, if I dare make a few well considered assumptions based on my broader life experience with humans in general, that your views are based on a fundamentally flawed tacit assumption that life back in the day was somehow universally wretched. Well, for some it was and for some it shall always be. But if we separate and examine "life" by regions and, more specifically, by culture we will note that there is a stark line drawn between empire and non-empire civilizations. Generally speaking, the non-empire people have been far and away freer, healthier, happier, and more prosperous, for a give definition of what it means to "prosper".

Your opinion and that of all people turns very much precisely on the basic assumptions and the standards by which judgments are made. If you think net.porn is more important than being able to carry with you the means of preserving your life and other property, then you are likely to see this world as superior to the old. If, OTOH, you are like me and value freedom and the greatest degree of self-sufficiency attainable as the greater virtues, then this world might not do so well in comparison with the old.

And in the end the dichotomy posed in the OP is a false one, as I have pointed out previously. Some of the things we have today are indeed fantastic and far superior to that which came before. Medical technologies come to mind - the simple fact that I can go to the local pharmacy and for $10 purchase a pair of of-the-shelf reading glasses so that my 56 year old eyes can read the words that I here type is indeed a fine thing. But the presence of those things does not the old-world entirely evil make. There were advantages then compared with now, not the least of which were the self-imposed censorship that the moral frameworks incited in the average man such that he was moved to act with minimal barbarity toward his fellows. How about the fact that people were generally mentally and emotionally tough enough and smart enough to allow others their opinions and preferences... at least within some envelope of choice. Where two people may have disagreed in years past and let it go at that, today we find some ghetto-rat or suburban limper running home for daddy's gun when someone fails to kneel down and service them on demand, the affront being intolerable to their pathetically weak and inflated egos.

Yes, we could go on for weeks and years discussing these issues, but there is no real point, save to say that each time has its good points and its bad. For my money, these times are generally worse than those past, but that is only my opinion. Yours is different. I find your apparent basis lacking in gross manner, but that and $3.75 gets me a seriously mediocre latté at that horrid Seattle coffee chain that has spread like a cancer throughout the land.

My real point, I suppose, is that IMO people need a little greater circumspection when forming opinions. We all fail at this, but as I get older I get better at not failing at it and I also see with ever sharper vision just how dangerous those failures can be and how disastrous the results.